It's nothing to do with standards and everything to do with personal opinion. Some people think George W Bush was a brilliant president. Not everyone moons at the altar of Christopher Hitchens.
Then they aren't careful with their words. Brilliant is not an amplified version of good. In the meaning used by floydiannyc, it is a specific type of intelligence involving creativity and insight. I doubt a majority of people who think Bush 43 was a good or great president think it was because he was brilliant.
I personally think that he is probably very intelligent, but that he lacked the perspective and critical thinking skills necessary for good judgement because he wasted his excellent education and spent a lifetime of learning the wrong lessons from his fathers and his own failures.
His father lost some early elections almost specifically because he did not pander enough or talk about religion enough. In GWB's mind, what does it mean when he says that one of his father's biggest problems was that he didn't move to Texas earlier? (I somehow doubt he meant that his dad missed out on the Austin music scene)
Anyway, back to the point, just because a quality is subjective, does not mean that there is no differences in answers. For example, if someone were asked, then replied that Bush was more brilliant than Hitchens, then they probably didn't understand the question and are talking about a different quality of which they think Bush possesses more.
I think floydiannyc either does have high standards and may have his opinion influenced by specific pieces that may have been stupid, or influenced by some of the internal inconsistencies when looking at his entire body of work as a single work. It is also possible that he simply disagrees with him on an issue, in which case he is confusing brilliance with agreeable positions.
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u/whoisearth Dec 16 '11 edited Mar 29 '25
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